Vote: Best/Worst v1.0.4 Class Improvements?

We saw a glut of class preview articles the last two days, with lots of news about upcoming patch changes for the Barbarian, Wizard, Monk, Demon Hunter, and Witch Doctor. Fan opinions are all over the place about the proposed changes, and I thought about running a vote for love/hate on all five classes, but that would have been a bit of vote spam. So let’s just do two votes; which class’ improvements have you the most excited, and which left you cold?

We’re trying to measure the patch changes in this vote, not the class as a whole, so give it some thought and vote for the class that you think got the most interesting improvements. Not just your fave class. (And the worst, not just your least favorite class.)

For instance, my current fave class is the DH, but her patch changes seem pretty uninspired. There don’t appear to be any changes to play style; just buffs to lots of skills that will provide more variations on the same basic kiting glass cannon build. So I won’t be voting for my favorite class in this poll, though I’m honestly not sure who I think got the best changes yet. I might have to give the previews another skim to decide.

Which class is getting the BEST improvements in v1.0.4?

Witch Doctor (36%, 2,268 Votes)

Barbarian (27%, 1,678 Votes)

Not sure/no opinion. (22%, 1,374 Votes)

Demon Hunter (6%, 396 Votes)

Monk (5%, 347 Votes)

Wizard (4%, 259 Votes)

Total Voters: 6,322

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Which class is getting the WORST improvements in v1.0.4?

Wizard (30%, 970 Votes)

Not sure/no opinion. (22%, 714 Votes)

Monk (21%, 672 Votes)

Demon Hunter (16%, 521 Votes)

Witch Doctor (7%, 232 Votes)

Barbarian (4%, 120 Votes)

Total Voters: 3,229

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Last Vote Results

The most recent vote measured popular opinion about the v1.0.4 proposed changes. That vote went up before the recent run of class preview articles, so the vote was more about theory than knowledge, but most of you guys seemed to like what you were hearing from Blizzard, even then. We’ll run another vote about v1.0.4, but probably not until after the patch goes live so we can vote with knowledge rather than just speculation.

How do you feel about the proposed v1.0.4 game changes?

2) They’re good, but don’t fix everything. (40%, 2,034 Votes)

1) They sound awesome. Big approval. (36%, 1,863 Votes)

3) They’re not so good, but at least a step in the right direction. (11%, 584 Votes)

The previous vote went up on the last day of July and measured the current class popularity. No real surprise to see the Barbarian on top, but I was surprised by how easily he dominated the poll. Also, let’s pity the poor WD, not only in last place, but even behind the hater option. It’ll be interesting to measure this one again in some months, to see if the various patch changes alter the balance of popularity.

34 thoughts on “Vote: Best/Worst v1.0.4 Class Improvements?”

for DH and Monk i feel that their changes are kinda “off the mark” they are not really addressing legit problems with mechanis ; they rather just add some % to damage , which is still better than nothing ; but not what i would have hoped for as Monk / DH player.

than again ; maybe these previews are too superficial – maybe blizz has changes for us in store we would not have expected from the previews ; which are more relevant than the preview highlights themself.

Well I dont like having my skill usage determined by having to use them for VQ buff regardless of if I want them or not, or not be able to do much damage. Also dont like my pets dieing if they get sneezed on.

The changes to WD let me use the skills I want to use when I want to and use my pets more.

TBH I agree the VQ numbers change is not great I hope they end up boosting it a bit so it more useful, but other than that I like his changes more then the other classes so far.

well we have to assume that these changes are the ones that stuck out most – because it wouldnt make any sense other wise.

so there are only 2 possibilities ; either Blizzard is terrible at identifying the core problems of the 5 existing classes. (eg. they said that One with Everything is very popular and thus it is likely OP. when the sad truth is that Monk passives SUCK and every monk is merely choosing the ones which suck least.)

OR they are terrible at PR.

i dont like either of these ; but i’d admit that i rather they are terrible at PR than game designing. because some skills ( eg Monk Passives ) really do need some help on usability and creativity department.

Just seems silly asking what the best improvements are when then are yet to be released. I could see asking what you’re most looking forward to in 1.0.4…

For example, they have confirmed that The DH skill Strafe is one of the least used skills. I can almost guarantee there will be changes to it. Was it mentioned at all? Nope. Because the previews aren’t comprehensive. Same way that gargantuan and fetishes weren’t touched on in the pet section for WDs.

Yeah, the WD might go down the tubes if the actual numbers for the other skills aren’t big enough. The base mana increase alone won’t make it if they are conservative with the skill damage buffs. I think the patch notes are necessary to even say whether it’s even an overall positive result.

Flux, I’m sorry if you took this as some form of attack on you. It’s not. I love the site and everything you do.

You say the readers can extrapolate without 100% of the information out and to that i agree. But we have no idea how much of the information is actually out. The wizard post pretty much talked about hydra for 80% of it. There’s a large difference between an educated guess and just having no idea what could still be unreleased.

Why wouldn’t you take them at their word? “Rather than focus on those minor adjustments, though (which you’ll be able to learn more about in the 1.0.4 patch notes), I’m going focus the majority of this preview on Hydra.”

Why would you expect big fundamental changes when they describe everything else happening for the wizard to be “minor adjustments?” Anything that would, for example, make channeling skills viable without 75k dps, or make storm / ice armor not complete garbage, or make wizards less reliant on running 2-3 passive “active” skills (Force Weapon, Sparkflint, Energy Armor), would all be major changes.

The changes were described as minor, it’s silly to expect them to be anything other than slight coefficient adjustments on damage. This is confirmed with the revealed “buff” to arcane torrent and meteor.

I dont think there will be much more on the class changes, that they presented. Especialy wizard is a disappointment. There are so many unused spells and pasives, biggest potential to major improvements from all classes IMO…

and i don’t have farm inferno to notice that Wizard and WD were the least innovative classes from playstyle and mechanics.

Wizard is dead boring. the only thing which really makes him stick out are those “hidden” loh modifier in combination with CM. so yeah i can understand that there is an uproar ; iam not sure if is justified because my wizard is only in hell. though i have to agree that my wizard has only become interesting since i put on weapon with 400 LOH and play tank mode.

its the same for WD pets already have problems staying alive in nm ; i cant fathom how much worse it must be in inferno and how the hell that design got a “pass”

the vision quest change ; well i agree that the initial design was broken and made the wd play boring. but the new vision quest does not seem to be any better ; judging from a creativity standpoint.

The “complaining’ I and others have done have made a positive impact on the game as Blizzard is changing many of the things we voiced our concerns about. The Blizzard butt kissing of the fanbois has been detrimental to the game, on the other hand. I’ve been a fan of the series from day 1. But I’m not a fanboi, I’m a fan. The fanbois should thank the fans for motivating Blizzard to improve the game.

Refering to your polls, it looks like the wizard is leading the way in the “worst changes” catagory.

i agree…. need the patch notes. its tough to judge on just one piece of the pie. plus to me its really tough to care THAT MUCH about class balancing when the fundamentals behind item hunting are in need of so much work.

We don’t have all of the patch notes, therefore making any guesses is just making vague assumptions.

However, with that said, the DH blog was very underwhelming, and I hope that it does not represent the complete Patch Notes.

While its nice to see some buffs to some of the skills, there are some other changes that should be in there. Just as one example, Fan of Knives is one of my favorite skills. I love the idea of a melee DH. But that skill simply isn’t viable because of the cooldown and resource cost. Rapid Fire is another example. While its pretty good early game, its completely useless in Inferno; it doesn’t just need a damage buff–its entire mechanics need an overhaul. All classes have skills like this.

those previews were fairly disappointing in content. They basically tried to give us an idea of how they were approaching things with some specific examples. It’s clear that they are pretty much looking at every single skill and tweaking if necessary. As others say, we need the patch notes before we can judge. And even then we’ll need to play to discover the actual effectiveness of changes.

Well I voted WD for BEST as the changes coming for him fix what I think are his biggest problems “junk pets” and the highly limited builds due to VQ mechanics. Though the VQ numbers seems to be a bit low now.

As for the WORST I picked Not sure/no opinion as at the moment there dont seem to be a worst as all changes seem to standard improvements IMO based on current info, nothing really bad in there.

The changes to arcane missle and meteor damage aren’t nearly enough to make me try consider ever using them and the changes to hydras is just a joke bc no wizard worth his salt uses hydra to begin with and all they did was try to bring them up to par with venom.

If they had talked about big changes to wizard passives like giving us 35% more damage with glass cannon and removing familiar and force weapon and removing the arcane power reduction on emergy armor and including a 10% melee damage reduction to the baseline spell I’d have been peachy even with the nerf. As it stands, all we got was a fkkin nerf. GG